Last day in Bangkok today and it's been more than a little bit stressful. Tom and I had obviously left it until the last day to get our money sorted for Burma, which we probably shouldn't have done; not only do we need to take all of our money with us in cash to Burma as there are no ATMs in the country, but we also needed to take crisp, clean absolutely immaculate US dollars with not a crease on them or they won't be accepted. The other slight spanner in the works was that Tom's bank card had been swallowed by the ATM, so I needed to get out enough money for both of us. We first realised we were going to struggle when I took out some money from my Australian account, to discover that I couldn't withdraw more than $1000 Aussie dollars per day (we wanted $1000 each). After quite a lot of stressing on my part, not even slightly helped by the 38 degree heat, I eventually had to get dad to come to the rescue and woke him up to request an emergency cash transfer into another account (thanks dad). Thinking we were all sorted we went to the ATM again and then I remembered that I could only get 300 out on that account per day. So back to the internet cafe we went so I could transfer some of that money into a different account, unfortunately remembering then that I didn't know the pin number for the card for that account. Another call to home it was, this time waking up mum who luckily had my pin numbers written down (thanks mum), and I was able to get the rest of the money out. Next we had the fun challenge of walking up and down Khao San road in the unbearable heat, ignoring all the men asking if we wanted to buy suits, have our palms read, get a tuk tuk etc etc to find an exchange place that would give us a good rate, and also provide us with notes that would be accepted in Burma. We found one eventually, and made very sure to check each note carefully, rejecting each one that had even a tiny crease in it. So about 6 hours after we set off that morning, with over $1,800 dollars in cash neatly flattened between the pages of my book we hightailed it back to the hotel hoping not to get mugged on the way!
Off to Burma at 7.15am tomorrow morning and I can't wait to get out of Bangkok. That's not to say it hasn't been without it's share of amusement this time - Songkran festival was definitely a highlight, as was walking down the street to discover a man hand feeding a teeny tiny baby squirrel...
I've been told that internet availability is almost non existant in Burma, so I might not update this until I'm back. I'll be flying into Kuala Lumpur on 18th May.
Bye for now!
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